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A week ago, several major U.S. carriers, including Continental, American and United, filed suit against the FAA over new rules, adopted in the wake of these growing ULR flights, that require flight crews to get more rest between long flights. The Wall Street Journal published a good story about the suit, with plenty of background.

Meanwhile, the NTSB made public its final report on what happened in the cockpit of a Bombardier regional jet last February when the two pilots fell asleep on what should have been a short, routine flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii.

I wrote about both the NTSB report, and the lawsuit, in my aerospace notebook.

In the last week, a joint lawsuit by several U.S. airlines against the FAA, and a federal safety report that detailed what happened when two commercial airline pilots fell asleep in the cockpit and overflew their airport, have focused attention on an old aviation issue – crew rest.

Boeing and Airbus are building passenger planes that can fly nonstop longer than ever before – up to 20 hours or more. And that has promoted new concerns about pilot fatigue and how long cockpit crews should be on duty before taking a rest.

But it was not an especially long flight that got two pilots into trouble when their Bombardier regional jet with 40 passengers failed to acknowledge repeated radio calls from air traffic control and even other planes during a short flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii.

The pilots were napping.

That incident happened Feb. 13, 2008, but the National Transportation Safety Board only released its final factual report over the Christmas holidays.

The go! airlines flight left the Honolulu airport at 9:16 a.m. with the 23-year-old first officer flying the plane. It was cleared to 21,000 feet and the 53-year-old captain acknowledged the clearance.

But then he and the co-pilot fell asleep.

At 9:40 a.m., with the plane crossing the island of Maui, air traffic control requested the pilots change radio frequency. There was no reply – nothing but radio silence for the next 18 minutes.

“Working as hard as we had, we tend to relax,” the captain later told investigators. “We had gotten back on schedule. It was comfortable in the cockpit, the pressure was behind us. The warm Hawaiian sun was blaring in as we went eastbound. I just kind of closed my eyes for a minute, enjoying the sunshine, and dozed off.”

The first officer told investigators he entered a sleep-like state from which he could “hear what was going on, but could not comprehend or make it click.”

Alerted to a possible emergency by air traffic control, the pilots of another go! airlines flight tried to raise the plane on a company radio frequency but also got no response. A Continental Airlines flight crew attempted unsuccessfully to contact the plane on an emergency frequency.

Instead of preparing to land, the go! flight was heading out over the ocean at 21,000 feet. It flew about 26 nautical miles past the Hilo airport before the pilots finally responded. The first officer woke up first and then woke the captain to tell him the plane was off course and that air traffic control was attempting to contact them.

When air traffic control asked the captain if there was an emergency, he replied: “No, we must have missed a handoff or missed a call or something.”

After the plane landed, the captain told the first officer to prepare the plane for its next flight. The captain left the plane and contacted the FAA by phone to report that the flight had lost radio contact because the crew had selected the wrong radio frequency. The captain returned to the plane and he and the first officer discussed whether they were okay to operate the next flight. The pilots decided they were alert enough to fly. But during that next flight, the pilots further discussed the sleep incident and decided they would remove themselves from duty when the plane landed.

The first officer later told investigators he had never before fallen asleep in the cockpit during a flight.

But the captain said that even though he had never inadvertently fallen asleep during a flight, he often intentionally napped during flights. These naps, usually lasting about 20 minutes, happened about once a week during his assignment in Hawaii, he said.

The captain was subsequently found to suffer from sleep apnea, which can cause significant fatigue.

Mesa Airlines, the parent of go!, fired both pilots. The FAA suspended the captain’s certificate for 60 days and the first officer’s certificate for 45 days. It could not be learned which airline, if any, they fly for today.

Although some countries allow pilots to take naps in the cockpit, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits the practice for pilots of U.S. carriers.

In 1989, NASA undertook a study of cockpit napping. A couple of international airlines agreed to participate using three-person cockpit crews on their Boeing 747-200s on long-haul trans-Pacific flights. An experimental group of four crews were given a 40-minute period during the cruise part of the flights to snooze in their cockpit seats. Their alertness was compared with crews who did not take naps. The research found that cockpit naps help crews be more alert.

During approach and landing, the long-haul crews that did not nap experienced five times more microsleeps – that tendency to “nod off” for two to 30 seconds – than those who took naps. The crews that took a nap also did better on a 10-minute “vigilance” test prior to landing.

During a microsleep, a pilot might not be aware of flashing alarm lights in the cockpit.
Based on the findings of that NASA study, a number of foreign airlines now allow cockpit naps during the cruise part of a long flight. The plane is usually on automatic pilot at the time.

Even though the FAA paid for the space agency study, it has never allowed the crews of U.S. carriers to take cockpit naps.

But pilot fatigue remains a major safety issue, one that has taken center stage since 2004 with the introduction of ultra long range (ULR) flights on planes such as the Airbus A340-500 and Boeing’s 777-200LR. These planes can fly for more than 20 hours without stopping for fuel.

FAA regulations in place for more than a decade say that on planes with a two-person cockpit crew, an additional pilot is required for flights beyond eight hours. And for flights of more than 12 hours, a double crew is required, as well as a dedicated flat bunk for crew rest.

On Christmas Eve, seven U.S. carriers, including Continental, United, American, JetBlue and US Airways, filed suit against the FAA over new requirements for crew rest on ultra long range flights. The carriers said the federal agency should have gone through a rule-making process before making crew rest changes that will impose an unfair financial hardship on the airlines.

The new rules require that pilots on these ULR flights get more rest before flying again.

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